Ben Roseveare is to join Ski Solutions as activities director to drive the operator’s non-ski activities business and expects the size of his team to double in a year.
The company’s main non-ski brands are BSpoke and Cycling for Softies, and it expects growth in the soft adventure market.
Roseveare, “sport mad” himself, told Travel Weekly that the six-strong team that works on non-ski product could double in the next 12 months.
He said: “I’m looking to extend the team. We have six at the moment and I would expect that to double within a year, then we will see after that.”
“At the moment we are concentrating on self-guided cycling. We see really exciting growth in both the brands and see now as a real sweet spot for soft adventure.
“The leisure fitness activities market has huge interest from weekend warriors transferring that into their holidays.”
He said one of the reasons for joining Ski Solutions was its “unique” business model which sees it act as both a tour operator and online travel agent. For example, when BSpoke pushes worldwide expansion Roseveare said they would work with partners on both self-guided and group cycling holidays to learn the market.
“The ski solutions model is a really smart mixture of our own tour operations and selling and distributing other tour operator products. It has proved to be a very successful commercial and customer proposition and there’s no reason to suppose that the business can’t do the same thing in cycling. I don’t think there are many tour operators and travel agents doing both in the same way. Our team is very much geared up for both.”
BSpoke Tours’ recent rebrand means it now has 50 tours to 10 countries. “Hopefully it [the rebrand] creates a platform for a much broader set of activities to be provided. It’s not just a cycling platform, but a platform where people can explore discover and relax.”
Roseveare joins from Tigerbay, where he was digital services director. He said having the experience has helped him get a “proper insight” into the capabilities of content management systems and how they can be used in marketing.
In previous roles, he has been Cosmos’ marketing consultant and head of sales and marketing at Mark Warner. He was also sales and marketing manager for Exodus Travels when it pushed its cycling business.
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